Happy and Glorious

Pages

Sunday, 13 October 2013

I know...not much has happened with this blog lately...But there is a good reason for it! I am actually working on my first book on the British Monarchy, which will be published as an ebook on Amazon! So, as I am doing all this in my free time, I have had to put this blog on hold for the moment, until the book is e-published.In the meantime, please follow my royal Pic of the Day posts on my Twitter account (see right of page), and do follow me if you're a Twitterer!Speak soon and God Save the British MonarchyAlex David

Monday, 1 July 2013

I recently attended an interesting talk at the Hampton
Court Palace learning centre given by Dr Alice Hunt, a historian from the
University of Southampton. The topic was the history of Tudor coronations, and how
the ceremony changed through 50 years of tumultuous Tudor change. Dr Hunt
proposed that the idea of the coronation ceremony remaining unchanged since
ancient times is a myth. In reality, although the main elements or ‘skeleton’ if you will, of the ceremony
have remained the same since the first coronation in 973, the ceremony has
often been changed to adapt the needs and circumstances of every age and every
particular monarch. Tudor coronations, Dr Hunt proposed, are good examples of
how this process of small changes over timeless practice works out in
practice.

1509: HENRY VIII

Dr Hunt presented evidence from five different Tudor coronations
from 1509 to 1559. The starting point was Henry VIII’s coronation which was the
least controversial and most traditional of the lot. Henry was barely 18 at his
crowning, his wife Catherine of Aragon was 23, and they chose Midsummer Eve
1509 as an auspicious date for their coronation. They were crowned like
all the previous medieval monarchs, and Dr Hunt used this model ceremony as a
way to describe what coronations always involve.

Henry and Catherine’s ceremony followed the plan set down
in the Liber Regalis, a medieval
manuscripts kept in Westminster Abbey that details down every aspect of the
ceremony. This illuminated work was created in 1382 for the coronation of
Richard II’s Queen, Anne of Bohemia, but the ceremonial order described within goes
back to the year 973 when it was created by St Dunstan, the Archbishop of
Canterbury at the time. The order of the service set down in the Liber Regalis is the ‘skeleton’ of the coronation
ceremony that has been followed through the ages. It sets down which part
should follow the other (oath, anointing, crowning, homage, etc), though it
gives some leeway as to who should be involved in it.

A rare contemporary woodcut from 1509 celebrating the joint coronation of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Henry sits beneath the Tudor rose of England, while Catherine sits beneath her own heraldic emblem of the pomegranate.

The key moment during the ceremony is not the crowning
but the anointing. In fact, a monarch cannot be crowned until he is anointed
beforehand. Anointing is a solemn religious ritual, recalling the anointing of
biblical kings like David and Solomon, and it involves oiling different parts
of the body including hands, chest and head. It is considered the holiest part
of the ceremony, so much so that the ritual was hidden from the cameras even during
the 1953 coronation. Through it, the monarch receives the personal blessing of
the Holy Spirit and is considered transformed by it. The ritual was far more
important to Tudor monarchs than the crowning itself and they
always referred to themselves as being anointedmonarchs, not crowned monarchs.

There is however some circular logic at work here because
already by Tudor times a monarch was considered legitimate even before his anointing (which is why coronations often take place weeks or months after
accession). What does the coronation do if it does not create a monarch?
The Tudors tried to get around this paradox by theorizing that the anointing
was a definite sign of God’s favour upon the legitimate heir. It created a
personal bond between the monarch and Christ, and this idea was eventually used
by Henry to assert his authority as the real shepherd of the English Church in
place of the pope.

1537: ANNE BOLEYN

Tudor coronations began to be tweaked from Anne Boleyn’s
coronation on 1 June 1537. Anne’s coronation was unique in many ways, and also the
last time in British history that a queen consort was crowned in a separate
ceremony. It was a very extravagant affair, conceived by Henry VIII and planned
by a committee working under the King’s strict guidance. The coronation festivities
were said to have exhausted the treasury, the most lavish element being the
procession from the Tower to Westminster Abbey, an integral part of coronation ceremonies from the 14th to the 17th centuries. The
Tudor century saw the apotheosis of these processions when they got bigger and
bigger and included rich spectacles along the way like, tableaux, recitals, speeches,
and fountains flowing with wine.

The most conspicuous aspect of Anne’s procession was that
she was paraded in the streets with her hair down, a traditional symbol of
virginity, when in fact she was six months’ pregnant, and visibly so. But far
from being a mark of shame the organizers used it as the main theme of the
procession spectacles! Wafers inscribed with golden lines were thrown in the
air as she passed by, and poems were declaimed along the way on the happiness
and glory the unborn son would bring (everyone assumed the child would be male).
There are conflicting reports on how the show was received. Edward Hall, a
favourable Tudor historian, said it was a joyous and grand occasion while the partisan
Imperial Ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, wrote that it was a chilly affair with the
crowds jeering and laughing at Anne. The glorification of Anne’s unborn son of
course came to nought since she delivered a daughter instead (though considering
that her daughter, Elizabeth I, presided over a glorious kingdom and reigned as a
man in all but gender we could say that the good wishes expressed at Anne’s
procession were not in vain.)

Anne Boleyn's coronation procession, recreated for Old and New London, a history book published in 1878 by Walter Thornbury.

Anne’s own crowning was also unique, Dr Hunt revealed,
since it is recorded that she was crowned not with a traditional Queen
Consort’s crown but with St Edward’s Crown, the crown used for the coronation
of the sovereign. This was the first and only time such a thing happened in
British history and it is unclear why it was so. Perhaps a mistake was made,
perhaps the Queen Consort’s crown could not be found, but Dr Hunt said it is
possible that it was a decision on Henry’s part in order to ‘renew’ his own
power as political and spiritual emperor over England following the
break with Rome. It could also have been Henry’s way to emphasize that, after
his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, Anne was now the undisputed Queen of
England.

1547: EDWARD VI

Edward VI’s coronation heralded a revolutionary reign
that saw Catholic rituals swept away and religious images destroyed. However the most memorable
alterations in the ceremony were caused not by religion but by the age of the young,
nine-year-old king. Planned for Shrove Tuesday 1547, the ceremony was shortened
and the most tedious parts—including the homage at the end—were cut out so as
not to bore the young king. Also interestingly, in a break with the past
Edward wore three crowns at his coronation: St Edward’s Crown was used for the
actual crowning, the Imperial State Crown was placed secondly as per usual, but
then a small child-size crown was placed upon the young king’s head. It is not
clear why the third crown was used—perhaps it was a mere matter of convenience
since the Imperial State Crown was too heavy to wear down the aisle for the
processional route. But whatever the reason, the ritual was picked up
immediately by his successors Mary I and Elizabeth I who also had themselves
crowned thrice with the same crowns. Roy Strong in his ritualistic tome Coronation ventured that this triple
coronation might have been a deliberate riposte to the pope, who was famously
crowned with a triple-crowned papal tiara, and to the Holy Roman Emperor who
was usually crowned three separate times with three different crowns.

Edward VI's coronation procession, from a stained glass window in Mansion House, the City residence of the Lord Mayor of London.

One of the most famous alteration in Edward
VI’s coronation however was supposedly motivated by religion. This was the first
coronation since Henry VIII had proclaimed the English monarch as Supreme Head
of the English church, and to emphasize this point Archbishop Thomas Cranmer is
said to have told to the congregation during the act of anointing that ‘the oil
is but a ceremony...the king is yet a perfect monarch notwithstanding as well
as if he was inoiled.’ In other words, the anointing was just a mere formality,
an empty Catholic ritual necessarily rolled over from the past. Edward VI was
king by virtue of his position alone, with no need for oil to be applied. The
problem is, Thomas Cranmer never actually said this!

It was an absolute surprise to hear Dr Hunt discuss that this
account from Edward VI’s coronation was actually forged in the
late 17th century by a man named Robert Ware, an Irish Protestant
writing religious tracts during the last years of Charles II when
anti-Catholicism was rampant. There is no contemporary evidence that Thomas Cranmer
ever made those comments during Edward’s anointing. The fraud has long been
exposed academically, yet the story keeps popping up in popular history and
occasionally the serious historian’s work as well! The reality is, it is very
unlikely Cranmer would have wanted to undermine the anointing, the most
sacred aspect of the coronation ceremony which in fact bound the English sovereign
to God in a similar way as the pope was bound to Christ. The opposite truth is instead that Cranmer actually over-anointed Edward, oiling him in more places that any medieval
king. He added the wrists, elbows and feet to the traditional body parts, and he
used both holy oil and chrism for
each part!

1553: MARY I

That Mary, Edward’ older sister, became Queen at all is
actually remarkable since she had been declared illegitimate and barred from
the succession as far back as 1533 when Henry divorced her mother Catherine of
Aragon. Her place in the succession had been reinstated in the 1540s, but she had never actually been re-legitimized in law and this presented a problem when it came to
planning her coronation. Parliament
proposed that an act should be passed to re-legitimize Mary so as to make her coronation completely lawful, but this was a politically charged step as in effect it would have altered the
constitution of England. If Parliament endorsed Mary's legitimacy as Queen before
she could be confirmed monarch at her coronation, a precedent would be set whereby monarchs were subject to
Parliament’s approval. Mary was understandably appalled by the idea and she
refused to countenance the proposal, going ahead with her coronation without
any Parliamentary re-adjustment to her birth status.

Mary’s coronation was also revolutionary since, by a
combination of tragedy and sheer luck, she had become the first Queen regnant
in English history. Dr Hunt pointed out that the most remarkable thing about
the ceremony was that not much ritual was changed to accommodate a Queen
Regnant. Mary was crowned with the same procedures mandated for a king in the Liber Regalis—a remarkable step in the
history of gender equality. There were some reports that she was given both the
kingly sceptre and the queen consort’s sceptre with the dove—as if she was
being considered both king and queen
at the same time—but this might have been a mistake from the Italian ambassador
who reported this fact. (Another important precedent setting was the fact that
her consort, Philip of Spain, was not crowned after their marriage, setting a
tradition for royal male spouses that persists to this day.)

Mary's coronation, shown in miniature from the Coram Rege Rolls, a government record kept in the National Archives. The image is highly significant as it is one of the first representations of an English Queen regnant.

Ceremonially, Mary’s coronation harked back to the Catholic
traditions of the Middle Ages, and was performed ‘according to the rites of the
old religion’ according to the imperial ambassador. The whole service lasted 7
hours—the entire audience at the talk gasped when they heard this!—finishing at
4pm when Mary emerged from the Abbey crowned and ‘twirling the orb’ in her
hand. She refused to be anointed and crowned by Thomas Cranmer, who as
Archbishop of Canterbury had presided at the divorce of her mother. Instead, to
perform the ceremony she released Stephen Gardiner, the Catholic Bishop of
Winchester, from the Tower where he had been imprisoned under Edward VI—sending
Cranmer to the Tower in his place. She also sent to Brussels for a new vial of
holy oil, since the old anointing oil used on Edward VI might have been ‘contaminated’
during the previous Protestant ceremony. Interestingly however she did not
remove the oath that now proclaimed the English sovereign to be the Supreme
Head of the Church of England, and swore it even though she personally
professed allegiance to the pope in Rome.

1559: ELIZABETH I

Just as had happened for her sister, there was some
suggestion on Elizabeth’s accession that Parliament should re-legitimize her,
since her status had also technically never been legalized after she was
reinstated in the succession. Elizabeth however vetoed the idea on the
same grounds Mary had used, that of royal independence from Parliament, her
council famously stating that “the crown taketh away all defects whatsoever” (including
presumably the suggestion of illegitimacy). The issue of Parliament’s authority
over the Crown would keep simmering for decades, eventually exploding with full force in the next century with
the English Civil War.

Royal hand-me-downs. Believe it or not, the coronation robes worn by Elizabeth in this famous painting were mostly recycled from her sister Mary's coronation (compare the similarities with Mary's picture above)

Elizabeth was crowned in golden robes, as shown in the
famous painting in London’s National Gallery (see above) but surprisingly Dr
Hunt revealed that those were mostly Mary’s robes, recycled for the occasion!
Only the bodice was made anew for Elizabeth. She also wore her hair down, the
ceremonial sign of virginity, like her mother Anne Boleyn had done at her own
coronation in 1537, though of course in Elizabeth’s case the symbolism was appropriate.
Not that Elizabeth was much interested in symbolism at that point in her royal
life: the date she chose for her coronation was not any particularly important symbolic
date in the calendar, but a humdrum January 15th, a day that had
been recommended by her personal astrologer, John Dee.

The Virgin Queen’s coronation was actually a very muddled
affair, one of the most poorly documented coronations of Tudor England
according to Roy Strong, partly because of the many particularities and
irregularities that took place. Most of the high clergy of England had been
appointed by Mary and they refused to take part in the ceremony, and Elizabeth
ended up instead being anointed and crowned by the Bishop of Carlisle. Even he
however proved troublesome when Elizabeth asked him not to perform the Catholic
ritual of the elevation of the host during the Mass. He refused to comply, so
yet another clergyman, George Carew, dean of the Chapel Royal, was recruited to
provide Protestant rituals at certain points in the Catholic ceremony.

To muddle things even further Elizabeth herself made sure
that the religious signals given during the ceremony would be hard to read.
Although she chose the same Catholic ceremony that Mary had used, at the moment
of the consecration of the Eucharist Elizabeth walked away from the centre
stage and hid behind a curtain, leaving people wondering why she had done this.
Did she disapprove of the Eucharistic consecration, as a good Protestant would,
or did she think it so holy that she wished to retire in a private space to contemplate
it, as a good Catholic would? This was no mere personal issue because no one
was yet sure what position the new Queen would take in matters in religion. Was
she going to reinstate Edward VI’s militant Protestantism, or keep Mary’s Catholic
rituals? Dr Hunt called Elizabeth’s curtain trick an inspired move as it kept
everyone guessing about Elizabeth’s real intentions, and gave her time to
make up her mind slowly on the issue (which eventually struck a middle way
between Edward and Mary’s religions). In retrospect it was just the first of
many acts of political ambiguity that Elizabeth would use throughout her
reign—and that allowed her to exercise real political wisdom.

The Future

Coronations might seem static and unchanging but they are
in reality dynamic events that always change to reflect the times and
circumstances. Through it all however, as Dr Hunt showed us, the essential
things remain the same: the anointing remains the heart of the coronation and
will continue to be at its heart at the next coronations also. In that regards, Dr
Hunt actually had a few thoughts on the coronation of our next monarch. She said
that the ceremony always needs to be planned carefully in advance and she
believes that the issue is already being discussed unofficially and behind the
scenes at Clarence House—despite any official denial. Forward planning is in fact
essential if the next coronation is to be adapted for our own times and needs, as
well as the needs and beliefs of the next monarch. She also ventured that, again
despite Clarence House’s position, Camilla will be crowned as Queen, and that
the public is slowly being prepared for it as the Duchess of Cornwall gains
more prominence and gravitas. It will surely be interesting to see if she is
right...

Dress Reharsal? Camilla might well be crowned at the next coronation.

For more information on Tudor coronations see Dr Alice Hunt's excellent book, The Drama of Coronation, available at Amazon.

To learn more about the history of coronation see Sir Roy Strong's magisterial book, Coronation, also available at Amazon.

To learn more about the coronation service, visit this dedicated page on the Westminster Abbey website.

Monday, 17 June 2013

It was another great birthday for her Majesty this last weekend with the annual procession following the Trooping of the Colour, and
the balcony appearance afterwards. This year I finally went to see the end of
the proceedings in person. Even though I have lived in London for 13 years I had
never come to see it before, partly because I don’t like crowds, and partly
because...well, it is true that you never tend to visit where you live. In any
case, I am glad I broke that rule since it was a great experience.

1. I arrived by the Palace towards the end of the
proceedings, right as the carriage carrying Camilla, Kate and Prince Harry was
passing by (so no pictures, :-( ),
but I was just in time to see the Queen coming back in the Glass Coach.

2. Everyone was snapping pictures as the carriage got close
to Buckingham Palace, above which fluttered a super-maxi size royal standard,
the biggest the palace owns and uses for special occasions. The weather at that
point was pretty cloudy.

3. Luckily there was a break in the clouds as her Majesty
mounted a platform before the Palace for the final review of the Queens’
guards. Here she is before mounted members of the Household Cavalry Band,
dressed in the colourful gold coats bearing the Queen’s cipher, EIIR, back and
front.

4. Meanwhile, most of the royal family had already arrived
back at the Palace and was watching the proceedings from the famous balcony.
The senior members—The Duchess of Cornwall, the Duchess of Cambridge, Prince
Harry, and Princes Andrew and Edward with their families—are in the middle,
while extending outwards are the extended family, mostly made up of the
descendants of George V.

5. The show below them included a small parade by the
regiments of the Household Cavalry. First were the Blues and Royals—of which
Prince Harry is a captain—then the Life Guards (you can just see one of them at
the back in his white-plumed hat).

6. Then came the mounted band of the Household Cavalry. The
two drummers presented their salutes in their traditional way: crossing their
drumsticks above their heads, while steering the horses’ reins with their feet.

7. The view of the royal balcony below the huge royal
standard waving above the Palace was very iconic and patriotic.

8. The Queen seemed to enjoy herself, as she always does
during military shows. She looked happy and smiling here, receiving a salute
from a mounted guard. She is flanked by her cousin, the Duke of Kent, who was
filling in for Prince Philip as the next most senior Colonel-in-Chief.

9. The Queen was still smiling as she joined the rest of the
family on the balcony later on. The Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge,
who had ridden in the parade behind the Queen, also joined her. Princess Anne,
next to the Queen, also rode in the parade in her uniform of the Blues and
Royals.

10. Among the minor members of the Royal Family joining the
senior royals was Edward, Duke of Kent, who actually this year had a prominent
role replacing Prince Philip, and his wife Katherine Worsley, the Duchess of
Kent. The 77-year-old Duke of Kent’s attendance is all the more remarkable as
he was reported to have suffered a small stroke recently. He is a grandson of
King George V via the Queen’s uncle, George, also Duke of Kent.

11. At the other end of the terrace there was the Duke of
Kent’s younger brother, Prince Michael of Kent with his wife, Marie-Christine
(first two from the right), and their daughter, Lady Gabriella Windsor, next to
them. On the far left is Richard, Duke of Gloucester, another grandson of
George V and cousin of the Queen. He is the son of the Queen’s uncle, Henry,
the previous Duke of Gloucester.

12. The whole royal family then looked up to enjoy the
military flypast over Buckingham Palace. From left to right: Prince Edward,
Earl of Wessex, with his daughter Louise before him; Sophie, Countess of
Wessex, laying a hand upon the head of their son James (a rare public outing
for him); Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall; the Prince of Wales; the Queen; Anne,
Princess Royal; Prince Andrew, Duke of York; Prince Harry; the Duchess of
Cambridge; the Duke of Cambridge; Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice of York
(Prince Andrew’s daughters).

13. A close up of William and Kate, with her visible baby
bump. This was her last public appearance before retiring from the public eye
for the impending birth.

14. A nice close up of Her Majesty standing next to the heir
to the throne—and his second wife. It is amazing how much things have changed for
Camilla in the last 10 years. She has by now earned the goodwill of a large
part of the English public, and there seems little doubt at this point that she
will become Queen when Charles accedes.

15. A nice photo showing how well Camilla has melded with the
rest of the royal family: as the military planes are passing by, she turns to
have a few explaining words with her little nephew James, who looks puzzled by
what he is seeing.

16. The military flypast ended with the glorious sight of the
Red Arrows painting a British tricolour in the sky...

17. ...before they flew over the Palace as people waved
little flags in the palace forecourt (the one in the picture is actually an English flag, not a British one.)...

18. ...after which it was time for the royal party to leave
the balcony and retire inside the Palace.

19. After the festivities were over, Londoners set out to
bring the area back to normal again. Here’s something you never see on TV: City
of Westminster road workers are installing traffic lights back in the middle of
the Mall.

20. The huge royal standard of course kept flying on the mast
of Buckingham Palace for as long as the Queen was in residence inside. But it
was quickly lowered down at about 2.30pm...

21. ...that’s when the Queen left the building. I was
actually walking back by the Palace on my way home when I noticed a small crowd
by the north gate who had obviously been tipped by the police officers on guard
that Her Majesty was about to leave. A few minutes later she appeared, driven
away in the back of a Range Rover.

22. Her Majesty waved to the crowd before the car turned into
Constitution Hill, preceded and followed by motorcycle police escort. I learned
later that she was on her way to visit Prince Philip who was still recovering
in the London Clinic, and thence directly to Windsor Castle to take up
residence there for Garter Day and Ascot Week (which is why the royal standard
was taken down from Buckingham Palace.) It is always a real thrill to see Her
Majesty upclose—I have seen her upclose before but never took pictures like
these ones!

23. Finally, a non-royalty related photo (sort of). This
young chap from the Welsh Guards was on duty before Clarence House, off the
Mall, and seemed very eager to have his picture taken. He looked directly at
the camera for this shot, the little bugger! They’re supposed to be solemn and
impassive, you know! But I guess he was excited about the great day we’d all
been having. A great day indeed.

Monday, 27 May 2013

As we have seen in the previous post, relinquishing a
crown in England has always been a painful event, both for the monarch and for
the nation. In the Middle Ages depositions and abdications were abrupt events
that were often followed by the secret execution of deposed kings. As the
nation graduated from the Middle Ages however political thinking became more
subtle and unwanted kings began to be disposed in much more creative ways. So
creative in fact that two of the royal depositions of the last 400 years went
on to influence the development of monarchy all over the world, while a third
deposition was achieved with such a degree of subtlety that it remains masked
to this day.

1649: Charles I

Charles I, the second of the Stuart monarchs, inherited from
his father James I a belief in the divine right of kings but unfortunately he
did not inherit any of his father’s subtle wisdom. Charles' determination to rule
without parliament and his obsession with imposing religious uniformity plunged
the whole of Britain into Civil War, King on one side, Parliament on the other.
Parliament’s wish at the start was not to depose him but to impose its views and policies on him, but that changed when it was discovered that Charles
was talking peace with one face while arranging an invasion by the Scots with another. This was considered treason and he leaders of
Parliament and the Army set out to dethrone him, but the way did it involved
one of the biggest revolutionary steps in European history.

Until this point in British history, monarchs had been
deposed by force and then murdered in secret (See previous post). The British
17th century however was a time of great intellectual ferment and
innovation, and Charles’ conquerors decided to embark on a radical new
experiment. Instead of brutal force they would use the force law to depose the
king, and it would be done in the light of day. Charles was put on trial for
treason, and if found guilty he was to be publicly executed like any criminal.
The notion was unprecedented both in England and the rest of Europe, and it was
truly revolutionary because their intention was not just to try a king but to try
the entire institution of monarchy, and to dispose of the crown together with
the king. The plan was carried out with fervour and precision: Charles was tried,
convicted, and executed in Whitehall on 30 January 1649, and less than 4 months
later the monarchy was abolished, replaced by a virtuous republic, the
‘Commonwealth of England’.

The deposition that shocked the nation. Charles I is
executed in Whitehall, before the Banqueting House.

It was bold experiment, but it failed for two reasons.
First, those who abolished the monarchy represented a small minority among the
English people and their groundbreaking experiment was not generally welcomed.
The public execution of Charles as a common criminal truly shocked the masses,
and to make matters worse the republican government that followed developed into a
brutal puritanical regime, eventually descending into a dictatorship by Oliver
Cromwell ( who became king in all but name). People thought Parliament and the
army had gone too far and brought the country into chaos.

Secondly, the attempt to depose the monarchy failed
because Charles, unlike his medieval predecessors, did not resign quietly to
his fate. He refused to submit himself to the authority of judges at his
trial, pointing out that there was no law allowing the king to stand trial. As
his objections were swept aside he also warned the puritanical court that if the
rights of the king himself were not respected then no one else in the kingdom
could be safe from injustice (a rich statement coming from him, but nevertheless
an accurate one). Finally, his calm and dignified demeanour at the time at his death
convinced the English masses—half of which had sided with the king during the
Civil War—that it was Parliament and the army who had become the real bullies.

It is often said that the best thing Charles I ever did
was dying, and it is true. Despite his many flaws and catastrophic mistakes,
Charles’s royal defence at his trial and his dignity in death saved the crown
in the long term. The English Republic soon declined into chaos, and a mere 11
years after the monarchy was deposed Charles’ son, Charles II, was recalled
from abroad along with the entire institution. The failure of the English
republic was a lesson the country never forgot and is still relevant today as
England continues to prize stability over chaotic change. For the rest of the
world however, this very creative act of royal deposition served as a model of how to kill kings under the guide of law, like during the French and Russian Revolutions. It is in
fact ironic that the destruction of monarchies all across Europe over the last 200 years can be traced
back to this short bygone experiment in deeply monarchist England.

1688: James II

England was lucky to have Charles II on the throne when
the monarchy was restored since he was, despite his fondness for carnal pleasures,
a wise and prudent monarch. The same cannot be said for his brother and
successor, James II, who inherited his father Charles I’s stubbornness and political
blindness, not to mention his mother’s fierce Catholicism. Many in the country
and the government considered him a threat and there were several attempts to
exclude him from the succession even before Charles II’s death in 1685. Once King,
James’ Catholicism became very overt, and his tendency towards absolutism a la
Louis XIV left no doubts in people’s minds that England was in danger of
becoming a Catholic absolutist country like France. There was some hope that his
reign would just be a temporary aberration since James’ daughters and heirs,
Mary and Anne, had been raised committed Protestants. However when a baby
brother was born in 1688 the country was plunged into turmoil because the baby was
going to be raised Catholic, guaranteeing so a continuation of James’ policies.

The situation was critical but James’ enemies were torn
on how to deal with it since no one wanted to plunge the country again
into turmoil after the recent chaos of the Civil War. In the end, the plan to
dispose of James turned out extremely creative. It began with a small group of Lords
sending a secret appeal to James’ elder Protestant daughter, Mary, and her
husband, William, who were living in the Netherlands as Prince and Princess of
Orange. The appeal included an assurance that “19 parts in 20 of the people in
the kingdom are desirous of a change”, and therefore they were invitating William to invade
England to get rid of James, and for Mary to take the throne. William seemed to
take the bait and invaded England in November 1688. After a few skirmishes, James’ support melted away and, after sending
his family ahead of him, he fled the country with his trousers stuffed with royal
jewels. (There was actually a touch of farce at this point: James was
recognized at a Kentish port while fleeing and was brought back to London,
whereby William let James flee again, this time
successfully.)

James II throws his royal seal into the Thames as he flees Westminster
in the distance. An original drawing by Peter Jackson from Look and Learnmagazine.

James of course had not technically been deposed, he had
merely fled for his safety intending to raise support to regain control of the
country. But the Parliamentarian organizers of this ruse cleverly declared that by absconding
abroad (and taking his baby male heir with him) James had ‘abdicated’ his
throne, which was now vacant and could be offered to someone else, i.e. his
palatable Protestant daughter Mary. It was a clever move indeed, but William
turned out to be even cleverer. He declared to Parliamentthat he had not crossed the sea with an army to play
Prince Consort to his wife. He expected to be rewarded with the main crown or
he would sail back to Holland—and curiously his wife Mary backed him up in his
request. This placed Parliament in a conundrum. Although William was a Stuart (his mother Mary was James’
sister, so he and his wife were first cousins) he was only fourth in line to
the English throne after James.

Parliament resolved the issue with a very creative
constitutional compromise: they took advantage of William and Mary’s married
status to declare them both monarchs in equal rights, the only time in English
history when there were two monarchs on the throne at the same time, William
III and Mary II. In return however, Parliament required William and Mary to
grant a Bill of Rights, and to swear a new coronation oath that said they would
govern "according to the statutes in Parliament agreed on, and the laws and
customs of the same." This in effect gave birth to constitutional monarchy
which modernized monarchy in Britain and continues to make it
prosper today here and the rest of Europe. And James? He tried to recapture
his throne with an unsuccessful military operation in Ireland, but it was to no
avail. Like all his deposed predecessors, he found that once a crown is lost,
it is gone forever. He died in France under the strain of harsh
self-penitential practices in 1701.

1936: Edward VIII

We finally come to what is considered the only true
abdication in British history, Edward VIII’s loving self-sacrifice in 1936 in
the face of opposition to his marriage to Wallis Simpson. This is my chance to
be controversial and propose that this was no voluntary abdication but a carefully
orchestrated, subtly executed, royal deposition in disguise. The official line
has always been that the King found himself forced to abdicate because his
government convinced him that the country would never accept Wallis as his
Queen. However, when you scratch beneath the surface you find out that the
government had other reasons for wanting
him to step down, which were actually more pressing than the issue of his
marriage.

The most obvious of the others reasons is the fact that
Edward was unfit to be king, or at least unfit to follow his father George V on
the throne. While George had been dutiful, hardworking, modest and utterly
committed to service, Edward was lazy, selfish, extravagant, and dangerously
careless in his words and actions, the affair with Mrs Simpson being an example
of some of these tendencies. In addition, he had demonstrated a quiet
admiration for the work Adolf Hitler was doing in Germany, and this caused great
confusion and embarrassment as England slowly realized that Germany was again
becoming an enemy. These were far bigger worries than marrying a foreign
divorcee since they threatened the stability of the monarchy and of the country
as a whole: even though George V had strengthened the British monarchy through
modernization in the 1920s there was still no assurance that our monarchy would
not crash down like other monarchies across Europe had already. Faced with such unpalatable royal prospects, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and palace
officials began to ask themselves: why put up with such a questionable king
when we could have a safe, decent man with a solid family on the throne instead—like
his brother?...

Poor,
maligned Wallis Simpson was nothing more than a tool in the government’s hands.

The reality of what happened in 1936 is that Wallis
Simpson was used as an excuse to force Edward to abdicate and replace him with
his brother Bertie, so as to save the monarchy from the damage Edward would
have caused to it. The love story between Edward and Wallis was merely an excuse,
and it has subsequently become one of the greatest smokescreens in royal
history because nothing blinds one to reality more than the light of love. The reality
is that the ‘abdication’ stands as the smoothest, most successful coup d’etat
in English history, and one that shows how far Britain had come in 1936 from
the execution of Charles I in 1649, when Parliament had killed the king to
destroy the monarchy: this time the government chose to destroy the man to save
the throne. (Edward’s abdication speech, by the way, was a masterpiece of
subtle allusions as he proclaimed that he had found it impossible to "discharge
my duties as King as I would wish to do"
and that Prime Minister Baldwin "has always treated me with full consideration".)

Ex-King
Edward VIII covers his head in shame soon after his abdication.

The Abdication Crisis greatly impressed itself on the
Queen, especially the damage that her uncle Edward almost did to the monarchy.
Luckily, her parents were there to restore credibility and they passed on to her a deep sense of duty towards the crown. It is very unlikely the Queen will
ever contemplate abdication and risk undoing the work of her parents. And it is
also inconceivable that anyone would force her to abdicate since she has been
and continues to be a huge asset both to the monarchy and the country. So
there is no chance of Britain following the Netherlands’ example when it comes
to adopting the tradition of peaceful abdication. As we have seen, this country
has its own traditions when it comes to abdications and depositions. Living monarchs
in England are never waved goodbye in celebration for a job well done. Living
monarchs here only remove their crowns under duress as a punishment for a job
badly done. Let us therefore be thankful that we have no reason to expect
abdication from our own Queen.